Prior art code division multiple access (CDMA) receivers having multiple antennas use a beamforming coefficient vector, i.e., a weight vector, to combine the outputs of several independent rake receiver modules each of which includes multiple rake receiver fingers and a summer, and each of which serves a respective one of the antennas. In such systems, optimization of the beamforming coefficients is performed independently of the optimization of the per-antenna receiver modules, the latter being performed by way of developing the rake multiplier coefficients for each rake receiver module based solely on information available within that rake receiver module. The outputs of the per-antenna receiver modules are weighted using the beamforming coefficient, and the weighted results combined to yield the decision statistic signal.